A new solution to force analysis including Coulomb friction in mechanism joints

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to propose a novel approximate solution for determining the reactions of joints in mechanical systems, which involves the influence of Coulomb friction. It is widely acknowledged that if Coulomb friction is used in determining an exact solution to the equilibrium equations for a mechanism, then it will involve nonlinear systems of equations. With the abundance of computer tools now available, tasks of this kind, especially numerical computations, are not particularly challenging. However, new analytically tractable approximate methods are still valuable as a straightforward way of solving the problem. Several studies have been carried out in this field to find a simple solution. In this paper, a new approach based on friction circle concept and Babylonian algorithm is developed for various mechanisms, which is exceptionally well-suited for calculating and streamlining the solution process for mechanical systems by eliminating the necessity for iterative steps at each stage of the force analysis.